Don’t Feel Guilty About Letting Your Kids Sleep With You, Their Social Development Is Safe

No need to feel guilty about letting your little ones share a bed with you several nights out of the week. Despite common parental worries that kids who share beds with their parents will not hit certain independence milestones, new research reveals that as long as the kids are old enough to evade SIDS, they will develop just fine.

Reuters reports:

“Parents can do what works best for their family and not feel guilty if they choose to bed-share, because there probably aren’t lasting impacts,” said Lauren Hale of Stony Brook University School of Medicine in New York, who led the study.

Intellectual and social development are all safe according to this study of 944 American mothers. But as a child who often slept her parents beds — and until pretty late — I often wondered if the whole insistence that sleeping with parents is not healthy was more so for parents benefits than for children. After all, this wouldn’t be the first time that myths about childrearing were rooted in parental preference rather than fact. How about the whole don’t cross your eyes or they’ll stay that way logic? Or bending your double-jointed thumb too much will snap it? Or jumping on the bed will break it?

Parent/child bed-sharing seems like another childrearing myth that we can certainty put to bed.

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